Michael McDermott - Hit Me Back
Rock Ridge Music
Four stars
“
Michael McDermott's music, like Springsteen's and Van Morrison's,
helped me to find a part of myself that wasn't lost, as I had feared,
but only misplaced. That's why we love the ones who are really good at
it, I think: because they give us back ourselves, all dusted and shined
up, and they do it with a smile....Michael McDermott is one of the best
songwriters in the world and possibly the greatest undiscovered rock and
roll talent of the last 20 years."
-Stephen King
In the 21 years since the release of Michael McDermott’s debut (1991’s
620 W. Surf),
Stephen King has always remained one of the singer/songwriter’s biggest
fans, quoting lyrics in his books or offering testimonials like the
above excerpt for the liner notes of McDermott’s albums. But while King
was always McDermott’s most noted champion, he was never his only one.
Upon the release of
620 W. Surf, many critics named McDermott as
the next in a long line of legendary songwriters, the heir apparent to
Springsteen, Dylan, or Van Morrison. As is clear now, though, history
told a much different tale. The hype went to McDermott’s head: he was
only 22-years old, a young, naive, free spirit with no idea of how to
reconcile his future path with his sudden dream-come-true situation. He
responded to that predicament by going off the rails, turning to drugs
and alcohol, partying in a fast-lane, out of control manner, and scaring
the hell out of the people closest to him.
One of those people was A&R man Brian Koppelman, who went on to
become a noted Hollywood screenwriter and producer, and Koppeman’s first
film, the 1998 poker cult-classic
Rounders, carried a lot of
this experiences with McDermott within its narrative. Matt Damon’s
gambling protagonist actually shared the songwriter’s stage name (they
call him “Mike” in the movie), while Edward Norton’s character, an
out-of-luck ex-con with big debts to pay, carried the surname Murphy,
McDermott’s actual birthright. Though they gave their hero his name,
Koppelman and screenwriting partner David Levien both admitted that
McDermott aligned more with the Murphy character, a notorious screw-up
who just can’t seem to catch a break. And things went like that for a
long time, McDermott compromising his talent to drink his way to the
bottom of a bottle after every show, or colliding with law enforcement
with the 2002 cocaine bust that befell him on the way to see a
Wallflowers show.
It wasn’t until midway through the decade that McDermott finally began
to find his redemption. He found it in love (he was married in 2009 and
now has a daughter) and in Italy, where he discovered that his music
had reached a much greater audience than it ever did in the states.
2009’s fantastic
Hey La Hey showed off a lot of that redemption,
shedding the scars of McDermott’s scorched past and pledging resilience
and devotion in its best songs. The follow-up isn’t quite as
consistently solid, but it has more highlights and its best tracks are
among the best things McDermott has written, period; a fair trade-off,
I’d say.
Past its hooky opener and title track (where McDermott addresses his alcoholism through an instantly infectious chorus)
Hit Me Back
spends a few ponderous, sluggish tracks (“Let it Go,” “The Prettiest
Girl in the World”) getting started, but once the record does settle
upon the right path, it’s a wall of hits right to the end. The haunting
“Dreams About Trains” kicks off an incredibly strong mid-section,
carried along by ghostly back-up vocals and striking lyrical portraits
that, in McDermott’s words, evoke “Robert Frost, Abraham Lincoln, Bobby
Kennedy, The Blues Brothers, and the fact that [he’s] always lived near
train tracks,” all in just over five minutes. The result is a
masterfully dense piece of songwriting, with enough nuances and
beautiful textures to spend hours dissecting; luckily, it’s only the tip
of the iceberg.
The shattering “Ever After” finds McDermott ruminating on the loss of
his mother, who passed away shortly before the recording of
Hit Me Back.
“The further we went on, I knew something was wrong, I felt it in my
gut/I thought Pandora was joking when she said some doors that open
won’t ever shut/Like a lion in a cage, my hands are fists of rage,”
McDermott sings in the song’s second verse, his anger, grief, confusion,
and regret boiling just below the surface. “Scars From Another Life” is
no less viscerally powerful, a skyscraping, Springsteenian power ballad
whose spacious, reverb-soaked production and floating piano arpeggios
immediately position it as the album’s centerpiece cut. McDermott is
challenging his demons here, carrying on the battle he was waging on
Hey La Hey
(and even referencing that album’s title in the song’s emotional
refrain), and the result is an uplifting, redemptive, and life-affirming
piece of music; there haven’t been more than a handful of better songs
written this year.
“She’s Gonna Kill Me” is a pop-laced rocker in the same vein as the
title track, while gorgeous piano ballad “Is There a Kiss Left on Your
Lips” is its companion. Both songs deal with McDermott’s adjustment to
married life, his tendency for staying out late, and the guilt he feels
in sneaking back into the house long after everyone else has gone to
sleep. The former is all-out fun, turning a situation many of us are
familiar with into a rootsy sing-along surrounded by blazing guitars;
the latter is even better, a buoyant arrangement built around the
perfect poetry that McDermott wrote on his bathroom wall following one
of those guilty homecomings. Elsewhere, “Deal with the Devil” is a
sustained scorcher, a dark, haunting, and atmospheric slice of Americana
that reprises many of
Hit Me Back’s major themes (McDermott’s
struggle with past crises, his coming-to-terms with his mother’s
passing) over a barely repressed electric guitar. And album-highlight
“The Silent Will Soon Be Singing” is a flawlessly structured acoustic
number, almost Dylanesque in its execution, which recalls the more folky
lilt of his last few records without sacrificing the deeply cohesive
feel of this one.
The closing duo, composed of the string-soaked “Where the River Meets
the Sea” and the appropriately blissful “Italy,” conclude the album in
strong fashion. The former feels almost liturgical, graced with a
traditional-feeling piano line, a beautiful female backing vocal, and
McDermott’s most poignant and passionate delivery on the disc; it’s
hardly surprising that the song served as McDermott’s eulogy for his
late mother. The latter encompasses every ounce of redemption that
McDermott found in Italy, a country that he says changed the course of
his life. The harmonica intro evokes
Nebraska-era Springsteen,
but the lyrical and melodic structures are more reminiscent of Woodie
Guthrie, a simplistic sensibility that turns the closer into a “This
Land is Your Land” for a new age.
For many listeners, both of these songs (and indeed, this entire
record) will drown in excessive sentiment and in classicist songwriting
ideals that we’ve all heard before. But McDermott pours every ounce of
himself into these songs, tearing down the walls between himself and his
audience and cultivating a connection that is sometimes uncomfortable
in its intimacy (songs like “Ever After” hit almost
too close to
home), but which is always striking in its power. These songs left an
indelible mark upon me, their moods and feelings refusing to leave even
as their final notes drifted away to nothingness, McDermott’s struggles
and triumphs becoming my own.
Too few people will ever hear
Hit Me Back, but Stephen King was
right: McDermott is one of those songwriters whose music is meant to
heal you, and there are only a few guys playing the game these days who
just naturally have that power. Springsteen has it, for sure; Van
Morrison certainly had it, though I haven’t yet heard his new album to
confirm that he still does; modern favorites of mine, guys like Will
Hoge, Chad Perrone, and Butch Walker (at his most confessional),
definitely have it as well. Some will always be uncomfortable with
songwriters like these: they will mock them for their earnestness and
write them off for not reinventing the wheel, but those people aren’t
really listening closely enough. For me, the best songwriters are the
ones who, as King says, “give us back ourselves,” the ones who can form
the sort of honest, intimate connection with their audience that
McDermott forms so easily here, the ones with the ability to write songs
that feel positively vital, that get under my skin and change me, even
in the smallest way. McDermott may not have fame, but he has the rest of
the act down in spades, and
Hit Me Back, opening stumbles and all, is arguably his most profound statement to date.
